More Tea Party Candidates Are Challenging the GOP Leadership

As a former Republican who held a seat on a local city committee for eight years and watched the initial stages of the take over of the GOP grassroots by Christofascist extremists, I continue to want to say "I told you so" to those I warned about the Frankenstein monster being created.  Now most of the Christofascist are aligned with (if not renaming themselves as and/or joining) the so-called Tea Party ranks and their combined effort make yet spell the end of the GOP.  In the run up to the 2014 midterm elections in November, more and more of the Congressional GOP leadership is finding itself challenged by insane extreme Tea Party primary candidates.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

There is the Tea Party Patriots “Fire the Speaker” petition, which is not to be confused with the FreedomWorks “Fire the Speaker” petition, or the websites variously urging people to “Fire John Boehner” and “Pledge to Fire Boehner.”

A new one, “Replace the Speaker,” appeared after Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, allowed a vote on raising the country’s debt ceiling to move forward.

[G]rowing unease among the most passionate and motivated conservatives is complicating the re-election campaigns of many of the highest-ranking Republican leaders in Washington. Across the country, candidates like Ms. Pierson are waging what is perhaps the most forceful challenge in generations that either political party has seen from within its own ranks.

“It’s very uncommon to challenge incumbents — period. So this is truly unusual,” said Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University who has written about fissures in the conservative movement.

Primary campaigns against party leaders are often more of a nuisance than a serious threat, token challenges waged by local gadflies. But what is startling to Republicans this year is the sheer number of candidates who are willing to take on the party’s most powerful players in Washington, and the backing they are receiving from third-party groups.

The primaries are another measure of the internal tensions within the party, and the erosion of allegiance to it, as it seeks to maintain the enthusiasm of Tea Party supporters even as it tries to project a message with broader appeal to swing voters Republicans will need in the fall.

Mr. Lichtman said the best historical parallel was in 1938, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to purge anti-New Deal conservatives from the Democratic Party. 

The odds for an upset in any of the primaries this year are small. But the election will test whether the Tea Party, a force that has helped Republicans topple Democrats in local races across the country, has become more self-destructive than advantageous.

In the House, in addition to Mr. Sessions, leaders being challenged from the right include Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, and Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. In all, six Republican committee chairmen in the House face contested primaries, including Fred Upton of Michigan, of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Frank D. Lucas of Oklahoma, of the Agriculture Committee.

In the Senate, the No. 1 and No. 2 Republicans are fighting off Tea Party-inspired challengers.

These politicians, many of them in their 30s and 40s, take a less deferential view toward their party leaders, revealing how divisions among Republicans have become ideological as well as generational.

Here in Texas, Ms. Pierson, who is two decades Mr. Sessions’s junior, focuses most of her sharp attacks not on President Obama or Democrats, but on Republicans. After a long day that included an interview with the talk show host Glenn Beck at his studios just outside Dallas (“Republicans are worthless,” Mr. Beck muttered to her off camera) and meetings with people she hoped would donate to her campaign, Ms. Pierson stopped in University Park to meet with potential donors and supporters. She also has the backing of FreedomWorks, Tea Party Express and Sarah Palin.

There is more to the article on additional races.  While most of these primary challengers will go down to defeat, they serve two purposes: (i) they will drain campaign funds from the general elections, and (ii) they will force incumbents to shift rightward and embrace more extremist positions which could hurt them come the general election and play to the advantage of Democrats.